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Status Submitted
Created by Guest
Created on Nov 18, 2025

Prevent attribute changes by non-root users

We are running a big filesystem that controls file access by (nfsv3) ACLs. The ACLs are carefully crafted to ensure the desired file accesses for the data. As ACLs are not directly visible via ls (there's only the tiny + character) users tend to make wrong assumptions about the general accessability of files and run chmod, often recursively. Some users also try to run setfacl. This often leads to the opposite of the intention, making files unavailable for other users. And this causes unneccessary work for the administrators

So the idea is to add one or multiple configuration setting(s) to prevent (non-root) users from changing file permissions, ACLs and possibly ownership by making the system calls behind the respective commands no-ops. It should be configurable to either report success but not change anything or to report failure (depending on the workflow one or the other may be preferable). Being able to set this per fileset would be a further improvement.

Maybe this could be implemented by a special ACL. That way it could be activated even for single files.

Idea priority Medium